In the healthcare industry there are multiple clinical terminologies in use. Each different set of clinical terms are associated with their own set of pre-coordinated, free text patient expected outcomes. These sets of patient expected outcomes are further associated with their own either implicit or explicit terminology models. A problem arises when different participants in the healthcare industry want to communicate with one another. For example, the free text expected outcome in one healthcare system can neither be understood nor mapped for use by a second different healthcare system in any objective way, except through communication between expected outcome terminology developers associated with their respective healthcare system. These developers understand the meaning of their own expected outcomes. However, even then, direct equivalence is often not possible. Currently, there is a lack of a single model of patient expected outcomes that provide:                A single definition of patient expected outcomes which can be specialized to drive the behavior of any model-driven operational system, and can serve as the basis for consistent and uniform point of care data collection;        A single interlingua for use in translating a meaning of clinical terms between different participants in healthcare system. For example, known systems are unable to translate between healthcare operational systems, between healthcare operational systems and external knowledge sources and translation between terminologies used by different healthcare systems;        A single dialog definition for use in defining contextual constraints necessary to drive a clinical dialog (e.g., patient characteristics, other attribute values) affecting workflow within a healthcare system; and        A single authoring definition for use in guiding and constraining authoring dialogs for users defining new patient expected outcomes.        
A further deficiency in known healthcare information systems is the lack of support for model-driven definitions of patient expected outcomes, and clinical applications driven by patient expected outcome models. Existing clinical terminologies include patient expected outcomes/goals, but these expected outcomes/goals are mostly not based on underlying models. While Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) systems may use these terminologies, these systems do not utilize a model-based implementation. Therefore, while the International Council of Nurses (ICN) created the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP®) Version 1 to represent clinical diagnoses (client status, problems, needs, and strengths); clinical interventions (or clinical actions); and clinical outcomes, known HIT systems are unable to efficiently use the ICNP® across a healthcare enterprise. The ICNP® describes a 7-Axis Model that facilitates the composition of these statements (diagnoses, interventions and outcomes). However, this known model of patient expected outcomes/goals is not sufficiently described to enable their use within an operational HIT system, such as an interdisciplinary plan of care application. The known industry models have insufficient specificity of detailed attributes to support application requirements and insufficient supporting attribute properties to define application and user interface behavior. Moreover, any HIF systems that do not utilize model-driven function are not able to decompose expected outcomes into a consistent, unambiguous, and computable definition, which enables secondary data use based on specific expected outcome characteristics. Simple text expression of a patient expected outcome is insufficient to support optimizing clinical practice for individual patients at the point of care, as well as managing clinical outcomes for patient behavior in the aggregate.
Thus, in known systems, data is not easily shared across systems that do not use common and semantically consistent definitions. These systems do not include standard models to help promote consistent data usage across healthcare enterprise or different enterprises. A system according to invention principles addresses these deficiencies and related problems.